Durante la Tregua

Colombia is the home to the longest running guerilla war in the Western hemisphere. During the Truce is Oonagh Doherty's politically oriented memoir of Bogota in 1985, a time when the M19 and FARC guerillas were in truce. Doherty's anecdotes take you to luxurious military compounds, guerilla camps, and tar paper and corrugated metal slums, as well as the homes of the beleaguered middle classes. She also provides a historical context, and brings the reader up to date on the political and economic turmoil of modern Colombia. Doherty disputes the modern media soundbite of "narco-guerillas." She claims that the truth is far more complicated, and that the distorted history we are given hides a U.S. supported war which profits right wing Colombian elites and transnational corporations at the expense of the Colombian people and American taxpayers.